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318
The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance
·
James Wilson Hyde
9
How
the
people
managed
to
get
from
place
to
place
before
the
Post-office
had
a
history,
or
indeed
for
long
after
the
birth
of
that
institution,
it
is
hard
to
conceive.
Then,
the
roads
were
little
better
than
tracks
worn
out
of
the
surface
of
the
virgin
land,--proceeding
in
some
cases
in
a
manner
approaching
to
a
right
line,
over
hills,
down
valleys,
through
forests,
and
the
like;
in
others
following
the
natural
features
of
the
country,
but
giving
evidence
that
they
had
never
been
systematically
made,
being
rather
the
outcome
of
a
mere
habit
of
travel,
just
as
sheep-tracks
are
produced
on
a
mountain-side.
Such
roads
in
winter
weather,
or
in
rainy
seasons,
became
terrible
to
the
traveller:
yet
the
only
repairs
that
were
vouchsafed
consisted
in
filling
up
some
of
the
larger
holes
with
rude
stones;
and
when
this
method
of
keeping
up
repairs
no
longer
availed,
another
track
was
formed
by
bringing
under
foot
a
fresh
strip
of
the
adjoining
land
(generally
unenclosed),
and
thus
creating
a
wholly
new
road
in
place
of
the
old
one.
Smiles,
in
his
'Lives
of
the
Engineers,'
thus
describes
certain
of
the
English
roads:
"In
some
of
the
older
settled
districts
of
England,
the
old
roads
are
still
to
be
traced
in
the
hollow
ways
or
lanes,
which
are
met
with,
in
some
places,
eight
and
ten
feet
deep.
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